February 10th, 2008
If I was smart, I wouldn’t have raced in Lake Placid. But I’m not. My wife and daughter are both sick, and it has seemed only a matter of time till I got a cold as well. It came on Friday night, before the Lake Placid Loppet. I got a good night’s sleep before the race though, and felt okay in the morning, so I figured I would go for it and race anyway.
I was able to hang with Eli Enman for about half of the first lap; he surged on a couple of short, steep hills around 12 km and I fell off and never saw him again. Indeed, while the lead group was smaller, the race was almost the same as last year: I skied about half a lap in a group (this time of two) and never saw another competitor after that.
Lake Placid has is the most challenging 50 km I have ever skied. There is, of course, the infamous Russian Hill, that the Russian team complained in 1980 was too steep and long to race up, but there are half a dozen hills on the main loop that are almost as brutal. You come through the stadium and ski a more mellow loop on the other side, then come through the stadium and do it all over again.
Except that (I have spoken with several racers and they will all confirm this) someone subtly changes the mellow second loop into a brutal, never-ending series of climbs. The trees and aid stations look the same, but the very terrain is modified to turn the nice, mellow, relaxing loop into a brutal ordeal.
I finished second, four minutes behind Eli and eight minutes clear of third place. I went to the awards banquet, which featured excellent food and a very long list of award winners. This seemed tedious at the time but frankly, anyone who can ski their way around that course does deserve a medal and some recognition, so I am glad the organizers support that,
I finished my day with a nearly five hour drive through the snow. Google Earth figures that I live four and a half hours from Lake Placid, though with clear roads it is under four hours. In driving snow, with some drivers (not unjustifiably) driving as slow as 15 mph, beating five hours was an accomplishment.
And now I am at home and sick. Beautiful new snow, and I with today and tomorrow to recover and my work schedule I won’t get to enjoy it till Wednesday at the earliest–by which time it will likely be raining!
